Toronto Bite Beauty Lip Lab

How often do you get to create a lipstick that you can call your own? Unless you’re a celeb like Kylie Jenner, probably never. Thanks to Bite Beauty, the experience is just a streetcar ride away!

If you’re not familiar with Bite Beauty, it’s one of the many things Torontonians can brag about on top of the Blue Jays win – it’s a Canadian lipstick brand exclusively sold in Sephora where all the products are handmade in Toronto. Their lipsticks are known to be extremely creamy and moisturizing, and are made with ingredients that are actually edible!

They opened a second location of their Lip Lab (first one in NYC, of course) at 678 Queen Street West in Toronto in mid-September so I decided to pay them a visit last week to create my very own Bite lipstick. It was a one-of-a-kind experience and I’m excited to say, I want to go back already!

I started by exfoliating and moisturizing my lips, while my artisan Erica (who was lovely and knowledgeable) explained the whole process of lipstick curation to me. I had to choose a shade and the finish (Glossy Sheer, Amuse Bouche, or Matte Crème), followed by the flavour. I knew I wanted a berry shade that I could wear daily this Fall and Winter. I’m not one to wear a lot of lip colour on a daily basis, so I wanted something fairly sheer.

Seeing all these beautiful pigments right before my eyes, I kept changing my mind about what I wanted. But Erica was very patient with me and offered multiple lip wipes while I tried over 10 different colours! After I decided on a shade (a deep berry) and formula (glossy sheer), I chose the flavour. All the natural oils smelt wonderful and you could mix two together – I went for wildberry.

Now that we got all three parts, the lipstick creation begins! Erica mixed the pigment, the lipstick formula, and the essential oil together and poured it into the lipstick bullet mould. The mould was then placed on a cold metal plate that reminded me of a rolled ice cream machine. Haha!

In about 7 minutes, the lipstick was solidified, and after Erica cut the extra off from the top, the lipstick was ready! I got a sheer berry shade and my friend went for a matte deep red. While we were both very happy with our lipsticks, the experience was definitely the highlight. It’s not every day that we can have a lipstick made in front of our eyes!

Now that you know I loved the experience, let’s talk about how much it cost and what I got in my bag – it was $55 for one lipstick or $80 for two lipsticks per person, plus 13% tax. If we didn’t have another event to attend right after, we would have stayed and created another lipstick since it would be a better deal. My bag came with the lipstick, samples of all three shades of the Bite Beauty Agave Lip Mask, and a 10-pack Bite Lush Lip Wipes.

Was it worth it? Absolutely! A Bite lipstick and the 10-pack Lip Wipes would run you $44 at Sephora. Do your math and you’ll realize that the experience itself (which was about 45 minutes long for us) was only about $11. An amazing price for such a unique experience for sure! If you want to have the ultimate experience and mix pigments around to create a customized colour, you can book for a a private consultation with the Lip Lab. I believe it is $150 for two unique lip colours, so that is out of my budget right now. But I would love to do that as a treat to myself in the future!